Military Vehicles, January 1997,: removing paint

removing paint

Carmen Falcone III (fbc@epix.net)
Thu, 02 Jan 1997 01:36:13 -0800

How this for a find? My buddy and I saw a "4 Sale" sign on, what we
thought was a military truck. We stopped to look at it and it turned out
to be a 54 M37. The sign said $2,200.00, 19,000 miles as is. We looked
it over and saw that it was pretty solid. All of the engine parts were
there with very little rust on the body. It was last used for the Civil
Defense, which painted it blue. My buddy stooped the next day and it had
already been sold. Well a week went by, and it was still there. I
stopped and the guy said that he was waiting for the cash from that
other guy. We called him that night and offered him $1,000.00 - cash. He
said come with the money and its yours. The next day, which was the day
after Christmas, we stoped with the money. Well to our suprise. He told
us that also had "some parts" laying around and that when we picked up
the truck on saturday he woould have them in the back of the truck. Well
it turned out that he had: the spare tire, a complete set of brake shoes
and drums, a full box of new spark plug's, a new - still in the box -
canvas top for the cab. Oh yea one last thing, the complete maintance
book from 1954 to date was in the glove box. I think we did all right.

Now we would like to restore it to it's 1954 making. I read that you can
strip off layers of paint, one at a time. We would like to remove the
top layers so that we could see just what the orginal numbers and
marking were. Under the hood was never repainted and you still see were
it said to - close hood etc. Is there a way to do this?

Please let us know and any other bit of information you may have. Thank
you and you'll be seeing us at the next show.

Thank you

Carmen & Joel

FBC@epix.net